Shemittah, the Jewish Sabbatical year, brings security and blessing. The Torah says keeping this Mitzvah will prevent disaster and exile. Shemittah is Shabbat LaHashem. A taste of the World to Come. Learn about one womens quest for knowledge and rediscovery of this long lost Mitzvah according to the simple Torah reading of the text found in the beginning posts of this blog.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Feiglin

bs"d

Dear Rabbi Friedman, amv"sh

Thank you for your comments! It's an important discussion that should be addressed.

My position is that politics is really irrelevant except if it represents a Torah position. Because if we vote for the Torah position then we are voting for Hashem to be in charge. Hashem has shown in the past to give the many in the hands of the few by His miracles..

I am surprised and disappointed that Feiglin has chosen Likud over one that reflects a more authentic Torah position. When will Feiglin realize that speaking up for Torah and Dat is not limiting but will unite and is actually all inclusive of the Jews all over the world as explained by A.B. YEhoshua in the article below?

Perhaps religion has gotten a bad name because too much has been done or said in the name of religion that is actually anti Torah.

In the Spring 2008 issue 32 of Azure there is an article entitled "An Attempt to Identify the Root Cause of Antisemitism" by A.B. Yehoshua. There is an Editor's preface note as follows:

The following essay was originally published in the Hebrew journal Alpayim in 2005 and provoked an intense public debate. Its author, the renowned Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua, undertook a demanding task: to decipher the most disturbing riddle of Jewish history to analyze and describe the quintessence of antisemitism in its various historical and cultural incarnations.

It is a lengthy and scholarly article but on page 55 the author writes; The words of Haman ben Hammedata, a literary character created by the Jews themselves centuries before Christianity, provide the first clear focus on the structure of Jew-hatred. They will continue the starting point of our discussion:

And Haman said to King Ahashverosh, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peopel in all the provinces of your kingdom, and their laws are different from all people, nor do they keep the king's law: therefore it is of no benefit to the king to tolerate them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed, and I will weigh out ten thousand talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasuries." An the king took his ring from his hand and gave it to Haman the son of Hammedata the Agagite, the enemy of the Jew.

I will try to make a detailed analysis of Haman's words which were put into his mouth by the Jews themselves as mentioned above, and are therefore all the more authoritative in the search for the truth about antisemitism. ...

Haman clearly speaks of a specific people and a specific religion, and he differntiates between the two concepts. He does not speak of a territotorial national minority (my emphasis, robin), but of one people scattered throughout many different nations and states. Had the Jews settled within the borders of only one nation, the task of identifying them might have been simplex, However - and this is a salient point - Hamas is not satisfied with the word "scattered" he adds dispersed. In my opinion this is not by chance, because by the addition of this adjective he implies that not only are the Jews scattered, they also do not resemble one another, they have been diversified, which adds to the difficulty of identifying and marking them. Wherever the Jew lived, his features were different from those of Jews living elsewhere: he dressed differently, his name was different (Jews often changed their names to local names), he adopted local customs, and his language differed from place to place, since Jews appropriate the languages, they mutated the host tongues. As a reult, Jews could not understand each other on a primary level. They lacked a common language, the very basis for communication between members of the same nation.

Haman's first sentense expresses this difficulty of identification, this element that is honed with the passage of history, in invisible "essence" that Freud hoped would in time be explained by scientific research, while Talmon and other historians bowed to it mystery.

Here we find the word dat (religion translated as "law" in the quote above), which Jews themselves sometimes hesitate to use as a legitimate description of their identity, alternately evading and returning to it through lack of choice even though there are various linguistic alternatives, and one could, in principle, use such designations as "halachic," "believing<" or "practicing" to describe this way of life. Yet, because of the universal validity of the world "religion" Jews must continue to use it. The source of the word dat is Persian, and the translation "law" faithfully reflects the Jewish religion, which is based on laws of do and do not. Haman goes on to say that not only is this people diverse from all the nations among whom it has settled, but its religion is exclusively its own and different from all the local religions. 'That is, the Jewish religion cannot be shared with a different nationality, unlike other faiths, such as the Hellenistic religions, which were common to members of many different nations at the time this text was written.

I don't agree with this. The NU will be frozen out of coalition negotiations as being too far right and outside the consensus. Lots of votes for the Likud means Feiglin is in and possibly Effi Eitam's surrogate placed a couple of places below Feiglin. At the rate the war is going the winner might be Barak and the Labor Party or Kadima. Likud with a small plurality will take Labor in with Barak staying on as Defense Minister. Feiglin says that Barak will be the next PM. At least we could have a summit meeting of (Ehud) Barak, Barak (Obama) and Mubarak. We'll see. I'm voting Likud with a clothespin over my nose.

It is widely agreed that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government decided to inflict a crushing blow on Hamas to restore Fatah-leader Mahmoud Abbas' control over Gaza—a precondition for fulfilling the triumvirate's commitment to a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. This will obviously be the paramount issue in the February 10 election.

Although right-minded people will want Likud to win more seats than Kadima in that election, it is extremely important that the Likud not win too large a Knessetplurality. Such an outcome would enable the Likud's questionable leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, to appoint too many Likud MKs to his cabinet, just as Ariel Sharon did after the 2003 elections. This was too many for Israel's own good.

Right-minded people will therefore want to vote for National Union, which, unlike the Likud, is opposed to any further territorial withdrawal and is unequivocally opposed to a Palestinian state. This non-compromising attitude cannot be ascribed to Netanyahu, whose slogan "reciprocity" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority means yielding more Jewish land to the disciples of Muhammad. Netanyahu's track record at the Wye Summit and on disengagement from Gaza does not inspire confidence.

To state the matter more simply, Israel will need in its next government a significant number of cabinet ministers who are to the right of Netanyahu and who can block any attempt on his part to betray the nationalist camp, as he has done in the past.

Involved here is a problem of "strategic voting," difficult in Israel given its multiplicity of parties and party coalitions. However, it may—repeat "may"— be possible to circumvent this problem.

Let the Likud, National Union, and the religious parties agree, prior to the February 10 election, that they will "unite" after the election, but solely for the purpose of forming the next government whose only common plank is opposition to further territorial withdrawal and opposition to a Palestinian state. This will not only alleviate concern among right-minded people that refraining from voting Likud will NOT result in a Kadima-led coalition government; it will also reaffirm undivided Jerusalem as Israel's eternal capital.

Meantime, MK Arieh Eldad, the most prominent member of National Union, should challenge Netanyahu as to whether he is still wedded to the policy of "territory for peace," or whether his recently announced economic peace plan for the Arabs in Judea and Samaria envisions the creation of a sovereign Arab state in that area, a state that would obviously have arms.

It will also be necessary for Eldad to challenge former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Yaalon, now a member of the Likud Party. The question is whether Yaalon's recently published policy paper, "Israel and the Palestinians: A New Strategy," surreptitiously envisions an Arab state in Judea and Samaria after the Arabs therein develop what he deems the economic, political, and judicial infrastructure required to make the Palestinian Authority a reliable negotiating partner vis-à-vis Israel?

Israel does indeed need a new strategy, but one beyond the secular mentality of Yaalon and Netanyahu. As I have discussed elsewhere and will again elaborate, the key to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is to make Israel more Jewish. Of this, more later.